Threshold
by corellian-smuggler
Summary: After the Battle of Endor, Leia tells Han about her relation to Darth Vader. Oneshot.


**Threshold**

The celebration was finally winding down. Fires that had crackled merrily into the night were dying or had been extinguished, leaving only a few that still burned bright and warm enough to attract a crowd. Dancing and laughter had given way to a quiet murmuring as those who had not yet been completely overcome by exhaustion gathered around the remaining flames. The adrenaline of the past several hours slowly ebbed away, and in many faces it was evident that the initial elation of their victory was fading—the grief of lives lost settling like a dark shadow in the trees.

Han understood that sorrow, but the casualties of the battle were not what troubled him just then. Shifting only slightly where he sat propped against the massive trunk behind him, he tightened his grip around Leia's shoulders. He had taken notice of her expressions all night—seeing the relief and happiness that he'd shared when Luke had returned, watching her smile and nod along with rebel troops and pilots and Ewoks alike, feeling in her the same disbelieving exhilaration that had overtaken them all because, against all odds, they'd done it.

But Han had also noticed that the sound of her laughter was off-kilter, and that in the moments when she thought he wasn't looking, her eyes were downcast and her shoulders tense. It was not, to say the least, how he would have expected her to behave after having finally achieved her goal. The emperor was dead, Vader was dead, and the second Death Star—which he knew first hand had been terrorizing her sleep—was destroyed. The Empire was crippled and the Rebel Alliance was poised to really take it down, but Leia Organa looked worried. Worried and… unsettled.

Han frowned down at the top of her head, which had been resting against his chest for the past hour, perched as she was beside him on their makeshift bench. They had not spoken for almost as long, even though Han had had a million questions running through his mind all night. It hadn't been the time for them. The rebels had been flocking to them in a frenzied, stunned kind of rush that Leia had handled with exemplary composure and which hadn't even bothered Han for once. But they were done talking about blowing up the shield generator and describing the battle and commending pilots; no one had come to question or congratulate them in a long while, and although Han had sensed Leia's need to just sit quietly with him, he decided it was time to make a move. Luke had retired and Chewie was nowhere in sight and there was no reason for them to linger any longer.

"Tired, princess?" he asked quietly.

For a moment she didn't answer, only continuing to toy idly with his fingers for a bit (she'd been doing that ever since they'd sat down, and if he hadn't known that her mind was a thousand light-years away, he would've thought she'd been completely absorbed in her study of his palm and knuckles and fingertips).

Finally, just when he was opening his mouth to ask again, she spoke.

"It's been a long day," she admitted in what sounded to him like a very masked voice. He wondered in the back of his head if anyone else would have noticed.

Han smirked half-heartedly as he gently grazed her arm, feeling the bandages beneath her sleeve.

"You could say that," he agreed, his attempt at nonchalance sounding even more forced than hers. At last she looked up at him.

"You wanna get outta here?" he asked gruffly, seeing her worry in her face. _Yeah, definitely time to get going._

She nodded silently, allowing him to take hold of her tiny hand and guide her away from the fire, across the arboreal bridges and into the darkness. His initial trajectory had been in the direction of the hut the natives had let them sleep in the previous night, but Leia gave his hand a squeeze and spoke quietly from down near his bicep.

"Can we go somewhere more private?" she asked in a much smaller voice than he was used to hearing. Such a request would have had his blood pounding under any other circumstance, but he knew that amorous activities weren't what she had in mind.

"Bit of a hike to the Falcon," he warned her, though he already knew what she would say and he turned in the right direction even before she answered.

"That's alright," she murmured, and in silence they made their way to the forest floor and set off through the trees.

His ship wasn't actually that far away, but it felt like parsecs. A sudden weight had settled in the pit of his stomach and Leia's continued complacency was making him more nervous with every step they took. He had no idea what could have been bothering her. Han thought back to the night before, when she'd begged him to hold her—how she'd sobbed against his chest in the moonlight, the two of them suspended high above the ground below. It wasn't hard to deduce that whatever she'd been crying about then was what preoccupied her as they headed for the Falcon.

He'd thought he'd felt wretched before, seeing her tears and feeling so helpless to help her. But then, he'd thought she'd been in love with Luke, that she was crying because of him. That his assumption was way off the mark was obvious in hindsight (he still had a lot of questions about _that_ , too, for kreff's sake), but he realized that as much as it would've shredded his heart to pieces, he almost wished he'd been right. Whatever had got her to upset was clearly much worse than what his own jealous mind had perceived, and his concern for her grew to an almost unbearable level. Only something terrible could have made Leia cry that way, and only something terrible could have caused such an anxiety in her on the eve of her greatest victory. He gripped her hand more tightly.

Finally, they broke through the trees and found the Falcon. Han had already seen the damage, but he still felt just as sick the second time around.

"Oh, Han," Leia murmured sympathetically, evidently catching sight of where the sensor dish was obviously missing.

"We'll replace it," he muttered dismissively, ignoring the twisting in his gut. "Could've been worse."

Together they waited for the ramp to lower, and Leia remained clutching his hand while he closed it behind them.

Her big eyes were on his face, roving over his features with a kind of desperation the likes of which he'd seen only one time before, and Han felt himself mentally recoil as he realized that the image was the same one he'd had frozen against his retina for six months when he'd been frozen in carbonite. She was looking at him as though she feared she might not see him again. He felt his muscles tense all over his body, and she must've noticed, because in the span of a heartbeat she dropped her gaze and jerked her hand from his like she'd been burned.

Neither of them moved, and Han was astonished to find himself feeling awkward. Somehow, after all they'd been through together, they still struggled when it came to discussing their feelings, and he knew that Leia was still wary of letting him in sometimes.

"So where do you wanna do this?" he asked after another moment of hesitation.

Leia's head snapped up, her expression one of alarm.

"Do what?" she asked, eyes wide, and Han gaped at her.

"Talk," he said, like it was obvious. "Isn't that what you wanted privacy for? 'Cause something's wrong?"

"Oh." Leia's face turned scarlet, and she glanced away again, shifting her weight from foot to foot and wrapping her arms around herself in the most uncharacteristically jerky movement he'd ever seen her make, more visibly uncomfortable than he could ever remember seeing her. In an instant he realized two things: 1. she hadn't realized that he'd picked up on her somber, distressed feelings all night and 2. just what exactly she'd thought he'd meant.

He couldn't tell if she was nervous now that she was being confronted about whatever was bothering her or embarrassed by her own assumption, but he found he didn't care either way as long as he could get that gods-awful expression off her face. Stepping forward, he brushed the backs of his fingers against her cheek before cupping her face with both hands.

"Not that I'm not eager to finally have my way with you, Your Worship," he said lowly, trying for levity but only half-succeeding, "but nice men like me don't try anything when their princess is upset."

He took it as a good sign that she grinned, even if it was probably just to humor him and didn't reach her eyes.

"Nice men like you, hmm?" she asked quietly, hands curling around his forearms, rubbing along his wrists as his thumbs slid tenderly against her cheekbones.

"That's right," he confirmed with a very serious nod of his head that drew the corners of her lips up a little bit more.

She squeezed her eyes closed for a moment, and when they opened the emotion he saw in them was enough to stop his breath.

"What would a scoundrel do?" she asked, her attempt to play along foiled by the way her voice shook, and his chest didn't feel big enough to hold the swell of love and affection and protectiveness that flooded him as he bent to touch his lips to hers. It was simple and tender, nothing close to the lingering, passionate embraces that they'd shared together in his bunk what felt like a lifetime ago (though he supposed it must have felt even longer than that to her), but it was enough that she was flushed when he drew away. Briefly he admired the elegant sweep of her eyelashes, the delicate shape of her nose, the depth of her eyes and the beautiful curve of her lips, but then he remembered the anxiety he'd seen pinching her face all night and with an unspoken sigh, he stepped back.

"C'mon," he said, catching her hand and heading towards his cabin. Once again she allowed him to pull her along behind him, allowed him to have the last word, and Han couldn't believe that he actually would have preferred her smart mouth. Then again, he reasoned, her complacency seemed to indicate that she was going to open up and be honest with him, and he couldn't help but be grateful for that after the frustration of her refusal to speak the previous evening.

Leia seemed to be determined to regain some semblance of control over the situation, because by the time he'd palmed open the door, she was marching past him and over to his drawers like she owned the place, rummaging through his clothes and kicking off her shoes.

"I'll be right back," she told him shortly before disappearing into the 'fresher, leaving him to sink onto his bunk and begin tugging off his boots. With the stress of the mission finally behind him, he felt the full extent of his physical pain for the first time all day, his bones and muscles aching. He was desperate for a shower and a change of clothes himself, but he knew he would wait. It wasn't his priority just then.

When she emerged from the 'fresher she was dressed in his clothes, her long, soft hair piled on top of her head. He had grown accustomed to seeing her in his clothing on their month-long trip to Bespin, and her shy confession leaving Tatooine that she'd been wearing his shirts to bed for the months that he'd been a living statue had lit a fire in his chest that had yet to burn out.

After the bizarre way she'd been behaving since the night before, he half expected her to hesitate when she reached the bunk, so he was immensely relieved when she immediately crawled past him and squirmed beneath the blanket, making herself comfortable on what he had come to refer to as "her side" in the privacy of his thoughts.

Han followed suit, reclining beside her and tugging her into his arms, but even when he ran his hands up and down her back like she liked, she remained stiff and unyielding. His instinct was to draw her closer still, to tuck her warm and safe against his chest, his chin resting against her head, but he remained where he was, peering down at her face. Patiently he watched while she fretted anxiously with the collar of his shirt, her attention fixed on where her fingers brushed near his skin, and he could tell by the way that she bit her lip that she was deciding on the best way to approach whatever was on her mind. A few times she glanced up at him, clearly aware of his gaze, but each time she would swallow thickly and look away until finally he could bear it no more.

"You wanna tell me what's going on, sweetheart?" he asked, studying her face. He expected her to start on what he was sure would be a well rehearsed presentation of her thoughts, a composed explanation that years of diplomatic training had drilled into her speech and a tactic he knew she was prone to using when she was anxious. To his horror, however, her expression crumpled, and, shaking her head, she rolled onto her back and covered her face with her hands.

"No."

Han tried valiantly to remain calm for her, but the sight of her distress had his stomach in knots, a terrible ache in his chest.

He let out a deep breath.

"That bad, huh?"

He watched the breath shudder in her chest as she nodded.

Han steeled himself and propped himself up on his elbow. His other arm naturally settled across her waist, his fingers finding her hip, but she didn't move a muscle.

"Well, you asked for private," he said as conversationally as he could manage, ducking his head to try and see her expression beneath her fingers. "Can't get much more private than this. Spill the beans, sweetheart."

Leia didn't speak, and he could feel her reluctance to talk to him like a static charge on the air. It was different from the tight-lipped resolve he had grown used to with her. He knew that she bottled up her emotions, that she was hard on herself and disliked discussing fear or pain, but this wasn't that stubborn need to be strong and invulnerable. She was long past that with him.

"This have anything to do with last night?" he asked carefully.

Eyes still focused on the ceiling, Leia nodded. He could tell by the way that she grimaced that she was remembering their little argument, and suddenly she curled her fingers around his arm. For the first time in what seemed hours, she looked him in the eyes. Hers were wet, and Han's mouth went dry.

"I love you," she told him in a whisper that was almost fierce, tears shimmering against the brown of her eyes. "But I'll understand if, after this…" her voice seemed to fail her, but he could see that she had mustered her will and would not stop until she was finished. She looked back up at the bulkhead. "I'll understand if this changes things for you."

Han stared at her, feeling his heart begin to pound.

"What things?" he asked more harshly than he had intended.

She evidently hadn't expected that line of questioning, but she lifted her chin and responded nonetheless.

"The way you feel about me," she replied. He would have found her tone infuriatingly diplomatic if it weren't for the fact that she was obviously struggling not to cry.

He was torn between outrage that she could even consider such a possibility and tremendous fear for whatever it was she was going to say. He went with the former.

"Princess, you clearly don't know a damn thing about how I feel if you think anything you have to say is gonna change it."

"I'm serious, Han," she implored him, but the words caught on a sob and any indignation left him in an instant. Throwing caution to the wind, he finally gathered her up against his chest and pressed his lips again and again to her skin, not even caring that his ribs protested painfully when she slid her arms around him and held on tight, clinging to him like a mynock to the hull of a ship. She muffled her sobs against his neck, obviously struggling to reign in her emotional response. Han could count on one hand the number of times he had seen Leia cry like that, with her whole little body shuddering like it was: curled stiffly against him at the holochess table two months after they'd met, drunkenly weeping for her lost planet after months of guilt and emotional denial and sobbing her perceived culpability into his chest; waking screaming from a nightmare on the Falcon for what had seemed like the hundredth time, except for once unable to roll over and pretend it was nothing and the next thing he'd known he'd had her tears on his skin and on his pillow; and then, just a few days ago, when she'd flung her arms around him, covered in sand and smelling like a Hutt, and he still hadn't even been able to see properly as he'd rocked her in his bunk.

"I'm serious, too," he murmured near her ear. Leia cried harder.

Feeling lost, Han resolved to let her cry for as long as she needed. For several long moments, the only sounds in his cabin were her heart-wrenching sobs, and his brain was a panicked frenzy as he ran through the possibilities, wondering what could possibly have reduced his brave, strong princess into the trembling mass of fear and hurting that clung to him so desperately. He could come to no plausible conclusion—what could have been worse than the suffering she'd already endured?—but he wanted to hunt down and throttle whoever was responsible for her pain.

Finally, her sobs dwindled to gasps and sniffles, and her crying subsided. They lay for a moment in the stillness, and then she drew in a ragged breath.

"I only meant," she ground out softly, "that I don't want you to feel… obligated… because of what you said today…"

He groaned internally.

"I meant what I said," he told her firmly. "And it's still gonna be true—"

"You can't say that!" she protested, sounding simultaneously angry and dismayed. "You don't know what I'm going to tell you."

"Doesn't matter."

"Yes, it does."

"I know _you_ ," Han insisted, ignoring the burning in his chest. He had to make her understand. "And I know that I love you—"

"Don't!" she begged, pushing at his chest. "Please don't."

The expression on her face was one of tormented agony, so anguished that Han's protest died in his throat. He began to really fear, then.

"Leia," he began, begging like she had been begging, but then, before he could even get out the words—

"Darth Vader is my father."

 _Darth Vader is my father._

He felt like all the air in his cabin had been sucked out the airlock, felt his heart stagger against his ribs. He'd heard what she said, understood each word, and saw by the naked, unadulterated grief in her eyes that it was true, without question, but he could not reconcile the parts of that sentence with the woman before him. Vader. Father. _Hers_. It couldn't have been possible. There was no way.

She watched him in silence, unfaltering, desperately analyzing every centim of his face to gauge his reaction, he was sure, but he couldn't react because it didn't compute.

"What?" he choked out finally.

"That's what Luke told me last night. He said that he was my brother, and that I have the Force, and that Darth Vader was our father," she said, her voice little more than a whimper by the end.

Han could not remember ever having felt so blindsided—so entirely at a loss for words, so shocked by any declaration in his entire life. But then, finally, as he realized the implications, as he saw the look on her face and identified it as _shame_ , as disgust not only for that monster but directed inward at herself, his senses came flooding back to him, and he was angry. Furious. Enraged, because of all the bastards in the galaxy, why did _he_ have to be her father? Hadn't she suffered enough already without having to live with that? Without having to look in the mirror and know that the man who had tortured her, who had tortured them both, who had brought more destruction and torment and pain…

It wasn't fair.

"Ah, hell," he swore, sensing that she was close to tears again, wondering if he wasn't about to cry himself. He took her back into his arms, but she was rigid, as though not trusting that he wasn't about to recoil once he realized what she was. His grip became almost fiercely protective.

"It doesn't matter, Leia," he growled, forcing her to meet his gaze. "Do you hear me? It doesn't matter. It doesn't."

She shook her head, her arms wrapped closely around her torso, fidgeting and clawing at the sleeves of her shirt as though she couldn't bear to be in her own skin.

"It matters," she spat. "I'm his daughter, Han. Part of me—he—"

"No."

"All the people he killed. What he did to you, to Luke—"

"It doesn't matter, sweetheart," he said again. He would say it all night if he had to, but Leia he knew had already come to her own conclusion.

"He was evil," she half sobbed, looking pale and sick and torn apart.

"Yeah, he was," Han agreed, feeling sick to his stomach himself, because he knew exactly what was going on in her head. "But you're not."

He could tell when she flinched that he was right.

"Han…"

"No, I know what you're thinking, and it's not true," he admonished, his voice some strange combination of tender and stern. "So you share some genes. So what? He didn't raise you. What he did has nothing to do with you. You're nothing like him."

Leia's lip was trembling, and she kept scrubbing away tears before they had the chance to fall.

"But what if I am?" she implored him. "He was my father, and for all I know, I'm…"

Her voice broke off, but he could guess at the words she didn't say. Contaminated. Tainted. Evil like him.

"That shit's not genetic, Leia," he promised, hating Vader with every fiber of his being. The son of a bitch was dead, and he was still hurting her—would never stop hurting her, if she couldn't overcome this. He took her hand and squeezed it. "Just because he was a sick maniac doesn't make you one."

She looked utterly broken as she pressed her forehead against his chest.

"You don't understand," she whispered.

"Yes, I do. My father beat my mother and left us both to starve. Does that mean I'm gonna do the same thing?" he demanded, running his hands over every part of her trembling form that he could reach, trying instinctively to soothe every bit of her that he could.

He'd known that she would protest that immediately, and she did.

"This is different," she said at once, arguing with the same fervor that she always did. "Vader fell to the Dark Side, and if I have the Force…"

"I don't care if you got the whole damn Force in one finger," Han murmured against her ear. "You're not your DNA."

He could feel just from her posture that she wasn't convinced, that she was still being eaten alive by her demons. He pressed his face against her hair.

"Isn't that what you told me on Ord Mantell?" he asked quietly. "That people're defined by their actions? You've spent your whole life trying to help people, Leia. You're nothing like him."

She sniffled against his shoulder, her hands fisted in the fabric of his shirt.

"And what about Luke?"

"Luke?" she whispered, sounding confused, and Han nodded above her.

"Vader's his father, too. You think he's a monster? Does this change how you think about him?" he pressed. At some point his hands must have slipped under her shirt, because his fingers were running over her bare skin.

Leia shuddered.

"No," she whispered with audible if grudging certainty.

Han hummed with satisfaction, drawing back just a little to catch her eye. Her skin was blotchy from crying; the sight cut him like a vibroblade to the chest.

"Then why're you letting it change what you think about yourself?" he asked.

Uncertainty played across her strained features, and she swiped her knuckles across her cheeks.

"It's just… If he's a part of me… I'm afraid that that evil—the capacity for it—is a part of me, too," she breathed, looking beseechingly into his face, and if Han's heart hadn't already broken that night, it definitely broke right then. He shook his head at her, tucking back a lock of silky hair that had come loose from where the rest was coiled behind her.

"Everyone's got the same capacity for evil, sweetheart," he told her. "It all comes down to the choices you make."

She blinked at him, the look on her face the one he knew meant that he'd really surprised her, and after looking at him in astonishment for the length of several heartbeats, she curled her arms around his neck and lay her head against his chest, holding tight and breathing steadily. Han returned the embrace, closing his eyes and feeling the tension in her shoulders ease a little.

"And Bail and Breha are a part of you, too," he whispered. "They're part of you. Their goodness is part of you. Vader or no Vader, Force or no Force, nothing can change that, Leia."

She squeezed him tighter, and he felt a few more tears on his neck, but they were different this time and he knew it.

"I love you," she breathed, cheek against his cheek, and he realized then that those words would never lose their effect on him.

"Good," he mumbled hoarsely, feeling her heartbeat in her breast, her breath ruffling his hair. He couldn't bear the knowledge that she'd feared her would leave her. _Typical Leia_ , he thought with an ache, _blaming herself for a million things that weren't her fault—not even close._ He wanted to yank every one of those thoughts from her brain and jettison them into space. "'Cause you're stuck with me, Your Worship."

She made a noise in her throat that told him she'd understood exactly what he'd been trying to convey.

Leia pushed him back to rest her forehead against his, and they rested together with their noses touching and their bodies wrapped around each other's. Later that night she would quietly explain the whole thing, about Jedi masters and twins separated at birth and how she'd sensed things all along, but just then all that mattered was his lips against hers and her palms against his chest, wordless promises made over and over, and he could feel as they kissed that she, too, had realized what he realized: there were no more bounties or crime lords, no emperor and no Death Stars, but for the first time there was a future and there was more than just hope. They'd been spiraling blindly towards this threshold for years, sometimes kicking and scratching and sometimes desperately barreling forward, but in that instant he knew that they'd crossed the line finally, and there would be no turning back.

"Princess."

"What?" she asked against his lips. Holding her had never felt so right.

"I love you," he promised.

She smiled.

"I know."


End file.
